Ghost Mysteries & Sassy Witches (Cozy Mystery Multi-Novel Anthology)

by Неизвестный

  I tried to stop myself, but those green eyes kept shifting between shades of moss and emerald, and I kept sharing. I wanted nothing standing between us. Here was the man I'd been looking for, the man I could be myself with. After sixteen years of nothing more than friendships and first dates that never led to second dates, I was ready. Ready to open my heart, to bare my soul, to make terrible mistakes in the name of love.

  When I finally ran out of secrets and delicious rosé wine, it was four o'clock in the morning. Despite the late hour, neither of us had yawned once.

  “Enough about me,” I said. “When did you find out about your powers? Were you a shifter already back during my Zara the Camgirl days? Did you and the other shifters hang out in secret internet forums?”

  His green eyes darkened like doors closing. “I'm not authorized to share that information.”

  I groaned at hearing that hated phrase for the tenth time. Using my levitation magic, I grabbed a crusty bread roll, which had become significantly more crusty over the last eight hours of being out, and lobbed it across the table at Chet's head.

  He reached up, claws extending, but he was too slow. The roll crunched into his forehead and fell away, leaving flakes of brown.

  “Too slow,” I teased. “You can't defeat my powers of surprise.”

  I fired away with three more rolls, all coming from different directions. Chet successfully swatted away two out of three.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  He growled, “Again.”

  The deep timbre of his voice, combined with the way he leaned forward, eyes flashing, sent a shiver through my lower back.

  I selected three more rolls and floated them clumsily through the air. Then I reached awkwardly for the water tumbler, knocking a spoon to the floor. “Oops,” I said, and when I sensed Chet's distraction, I fired at his head with all three rolls in sequence.

  He lashed all three rolls away in a frenzy of crumbs. The air smelled of burned toast. But the most surprising part was his face, which had contorted—not into the face of a furry wolf, but something more like a demon. The angry red lumps and deep wrinkles disappeared almost immediately but remained burned into my mind. It was the face of nightmares.

  “Chet,” I said. “Are you okay? I was just horsing around.”

  He got to his feet and cleared his throat, brushing the bread crumbs from his dark gray suit. The bright yellow tie with its fox print seemed even more absurd after his ferocious display.

  “I should be going,” he said, his voice gritty but quiet. “We try to keep Corvin on a regular schedule, and he should be sleeping in his own bed when the sun comes up.”

  I jumped up and caught him by the arm. “Wait,” I said. “I meant what I said. You can be your true self around me. You just caught me off guard with that look on your face.”

  “Zara, you're a nice, innocent girl,” he said.

  I released his arm and put my hands on my hips. “There's no need to be sarcastic,” I said.

  He didn't react to my joke at all.

  “It's late,” he said, walking toward the living room.

  Corvin was sleeping like a kitten, his lower half was curled up under a patchwork quilt, and his top half was stretched out, nearly melting off the edge of the sofa. Chet leaned over and picked him up as easily as crumpled paper. He cradled the sleeping boy to his chest.

  “Thank you for inviting us,” Chet said. He nodded at Zoey, who was stirring on her couch at the sound of our voices. “And thank Zoey for being such a good friend to Corvin.” His voice was low and thick with emotion. “The kindness of the Riddle family does not go unnoticed.”

  He moved with supernatural speed toward the door and was gone.

  I slowly walked over to Zoey and attempted to rouse her. She flopped one sleepy hand over her eyes and mumbled, “Five more minutes.”

  I leaned over and brushed her strawberry-blonde hair out of her face. She looked like a sleeping angel.

  “You made me so proud tonight,” I whispered.

  She squirmed and relaxed. “Two minutes,” she mumbled.

  “Once we get a few things settled, I think we're both going to love our new lives here,” I said. “I know you aren't always on board with my crazy schemes, but I think picking up and moving here was one of my better ones.”

  Her face relaxed even more, and her breathing slowed. She was fast asleep.

  “I just want you to be happy,” I said, shaking out the patchwork quilt and then tucking it in around her. “Happy and safe.”

  A male voice behind me said, “Safe? You'll have to try harder.”

  I whipped around, my hands raised to defend myself.

  There was someone in the room with us. Chet's father, Don.

  “Grampa Don,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  He sat like a coiled rattlesnake in the recliner, in the darkened corner of the room. I could have sworn I'd seen him leave with the other guests. I glanced around the room, making note of the objects that were light enough for me to lift with my magic and still heavy enough to do some damage.

  Chapter 19

  “Your home is very comfortable,” Don said, shifting the recliner into the upright position.

  “Are you threatening me? What did you mean about me having to try harder to keep my daughter safe?”

  He rubbed his chin and looked over at Zoey, who was sleeping soundly on the sofa, her strawberry-blonde hair fanned out on the soft velvet pillow.

  In the low light of the room, Don's gray hair was the color of the ashes at the end of a burned cigarette. He'd seemed like a sweet, harmless old man when he was bartering for pork products and complaining about the weather. Now, after uttering a veiled threat inside my home, his facial features took on knife-edge sharpness. But I had teeth of my own.

  “Either talk or hit the road,” I growled. I used my powers to click the nearby lamp's brightness up a notch. It wasn't the same as shining an interrogation light in someone's face, but it was better than nothing.

  Don gave me the smallest of nods. “If you want to keep your family safe, you need to open your eyes,” he said. “Chet can't handle this homicide investigation on his own. He's blinded by his own ideas.”

  Since Don wasn't getting up from the chair anytime soon—and who could blame him? It was a very comfortable chair—I pushed over my daughter's feet and took a seat at the end of the sofa.

  “How's Chet blinded?” I asked. “Wait. Are you also a shifter?”

  His sharp features didn't budge. “Magic runs in families.”

  “Are you an X-Files investigator?”

  The corner of Don's mouth twitched up. “They weren't wrong about your sense of humor. You certainly do have a novel way of looking at things. I suppose having your powers lay dormant for so many years has altered you.”

  I clenched my jaw. He knew about my late-blooming powers? How? I was dying to ask but didn't want to give anything away. Besides, it might have been a lucky guess.

  “You don't know what you're talking about,” I said coolly. “Let's get to why you were sitting in my dark living room like some cheesy James Bond villain. Do you have a message for me? A mission? A potion request?”

  “I want you to help Chet with his investigation,” he said. “Lend him your career skills.”

  “How? I'm a librarian, not a detective. And yes, I already checked the library for reference materials on all things supernatural. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you that the Wisteria Public Library, funded by municipal taxes, doesn't carry a huge selection of leather-bound books of spells and prophecies.”

  “Zara, you were summoned here for a reason.”

  “Summoned?” My impatience bubbled up. I wanted to shake Don Moore until the truth came out. The recliner began to shift and tremble.

  The ashen-haired man shot me an amused eyebrow-lift.

  The recliner began to rock, reclining back creakily and then jerking back upright again. I couldn't control it. I wanted the chair to shake.
I wanted it to snap together like the jaws of a crocodile and squeeze the truth out of Don.

  Don snapped his fingers and barked, “Enough!”

  The recliner obeyed and stopped its wild-bronco bucking. Next to me on the couch, Zoey whimpered and rolled over but didn't wake.

  “Did you do that?” I asked Don.

  He leaned forward and groaned as he pulled himself out of the comfortable chair. I suspected his old-man noises and slow movements were nothing more than an act, a ruse to make people underestimate the older man with the grumpy mouth and sharp eyes.

  “It's past my bedtime,” he said with a yawn.

  “Don't go yet. Would you like a cup of coffee? More dessert? You haven't told me how I'm supposed to help Chet. I've tried talking to the spirit of Winona Vander Zalm. I've asked her to tell me if she was murdered, and if so, by whom, but she's terrible at communicating. Every time I try to get information, I wind up at the store buying spices and gourmet things I can't pronounce.”

  “What would a homicide detective do?”

  Without hesitation, I answered, “Follow the money. Find out who benefits from her death and check their alibis.”

  Don turned to give me a nod on his way to the front door. “Exactly,” he said. “Her main asset was this home, which was sold to you.”

  “It was my money,” I said with a gasp. My blood ran cold. The down payment I'd proudly amassed over sixteen years of scrimping and saving might have contributed to a sweet old woman's death.

  As my mind raced with paranoid thoughts, I felt the icy embrace of the home's former owner wrap around my heart. I was on the right track, and the chill was Winona's terrifying way of encouraging me.

  “She had no kids,” I said. “Did she have a will? Who inherited her estate?”

  Don reached for the doorhandle and smiled. “Winona Vander Zalm specified in her will that everything would go to the nice family next door. The Moore family.”

  He yanked open the door and stepped out into the darkness. The motion-sensitive porch light came on with a blast of yellow light and immediately shattered with a pop and a hiss. Don was a shadow.

  “One more thing,” the shadow said. “Don't tell Chet about this conversation.”

  “But—”

  He waved his hand, and my words bottlenecked in my throat like a ten-car pileup on the Kennedy Expressway at rush hour.

  Shadowy Don said, “If I'd wanted him to know, I would have joined your four-hour conversation in the dining room rather than letting all the talk about feelings put me to sleep.”

  I snorted. “It's healthy to talk about your feelings.”

  “Zara, I think you have a lot of potential. As a witch, and as someone on my good side. Don't blabber about this conversation and get yourself on my bad side.”

  The tone of his voice was as dark as his shadowed face. I nodded mutely.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Grampa “Hide in the Dark Like a Cheesy James Bond Villain” Don Moore didn't say anything about not sharing our conversation with my daughter.

  “Zoey,” I whispered. “There's breaking news. Beep-beep-boop-boop-breaking-news. Wake up.”

  She lifted her head just enough to free her pillow and pull it back down on top of her head. She was next to me, hogging the center of my queen-sized bed and squeezing me toward the edge, like the notorious bed-hog she was. She was sleeping on top of my covers and still wearing last night's clothes under the quilt she'd dragged upstairs from the sofa. She must have woken in the living room and decided my bed was the place to be, which actually was convenient for me.

  I craned my neck and checked the time. Noon, right on the dot. I'd gotten five hours of sleep, which would have been a luxury back when I was working full-time, raising a pre-teen, and completing my Master's degree in Library Science.

  From under the pillow, Zoey moaned, “You and Corvin's dad were looking friendly last night.”

  “He has a name,” I said. “Are you calling him Corvin's dad because it's the least sexy way to describe him and you're secretly trying to sabotage any romance potential? Don't answer that. I don't want to know.”

  “Less paranoia, more news,” she said sleepily.

  I yanked the pillow away so I could watch her reactions. I breathlessly told her about Grampa Don hiding in the living room, listening in on my conversation with Chet, and then giving his ominous warnings about keeping my family safe. Zoey frowned and nodded for me to keep talking. I told her about his request for me to help Chet with the investigation, as well as the big kicker.

  She'd been yawning, and the news of the inheritance made her stop, mid-yawn. “What? The Moore family got all the money from her estate?”

  “My money,” I said, sitting up and tapping my chest at the neckline of my sleepshirt. “My hard-earned money.” I felt my eyes welling up. The whole situation was feeling hopelessly tangled, and I couldn't push away these new feelings of responsibility and guilt.

  “Mom, don't be sad,” she said softly. “If that silly real estate agent hadn't sold the house to you, she would have sold it to someone else eventually. Then they'd have a ghost, and what are the odds that person would be a witch? Let alone a witch with amazing spirit-magnet powers. If you think about it, you're the best possible person to have bought this house.” She pulled herself upright and stretched while looking around the room. “Besides, it's a delightful house, and it loves having us inside it.” She gave me a confused look. “Should that be inside her? Are houses feminine? Ships and cars are feminine.”

  “La maison,” I said. “Feminine. And what are you talking about? Has the house been talking to you?” I made a spooky face. “Do the walls whisper?”

  Zoey shrugged. “Just a feeling.” She rolled out of the bed and whipped away her blanket along with all my warm bedcovers. “Up and at 'em!”

  “Five more minutes,” I pleaded, trying to grab the blankets back.

  “Nope,” she said. “You get up and think up some excuse to go next door. If Don wants you to help Chet, and our ghost friend wants her death avenged, and you like making kissy faces at your new boyfriend, then it's like killing three birds with one stone.” She grabbed my last bit of comfort—my pillow—and pulled it out of reach. “Now march yourself into the bathroom, hose off some of that makeup, and go next door to borrow a cup of avocado juice, which is… totally a real thing and not nonsense I just made up.” She pointed at the door to the bathroom. “Go!”

  “Avocado juice?” Chet stood in the doorway of his blue house, frowning at me.

  “Zoey says it's a real thing,” I said. “But if you're not up on the coolest, hippest juice blends, I guess any juice will do. Pineapple. Orange. Pineapple-orange medley. Any type of medley.”

  Chet stepped back and waved me inside. “We do have juice.”

  “Perfect.”

  “It's frozen, so I'll have to mix it with water. And it might actually be pink lemonade.”

  “Made from pink lemons?”

  He glanced back over his shoulder as we walked toward his kitchen. “Are you trying to trick me with logic?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “In fact, I want to help you. The avocado juice was just a made-up excuse to get inside your house.”

  “No kidding.” He opened the freezer compartment of a deluxe-looking stainless steel fridge and surveyed the contents. He had a half-dozen flavors of frozen juice.

  “That one looks good.” I used my magic to lift a container of orange concentrate. “You can't go wrong with orange.”

  He skewered the container mid-air with one quick claw.

  “You're fast with those things,” I said.

  He glanced over at the kitchen window, frowning. “I should be more careful. My father warned me not to get reckless showing off for you, but I can't seem to help myself. Zara, you have a power over me that has nothing to do with the supernatural.”

  My cheeks warmed at his compliment. When he'd left my house at just after fou
r o'clock that morning, he'd seemed intent on closing himself off. Now, though, he was warm again. And darn it if a man alternating between hot and cold wasn't like catnip to me.

  They say people with no boundaries enjoy flinging themselves at people with rigid boundaries. As soon as my powers got strong enough for me to lift my own body weight, perhaps I would literally fling myself at him. Oh, how I longed to be caught in those strong, muscular arms of his—provided he kept his claws retracted.

  Chet used a handheld blender to whip the juice so it was icy cold with suspended crystals. He handed me a glass, caught my eye, and asked, “What devious things are you thinking about right now?”

  “Nothing devious,” I said, looking around the kitchen. “Nice renovation. Sort of a farmhouse chic thing. Very sexy. And your layout is a mirror image of my house.”

  He rinsed the blender under an enormous faucet. “You can't go wrong with a huge, concrete sink,” he said.

  “No kidding. You could dismantle a body in there.”

  His nostrils widened and his upper lip twitched. “What are you implying?”

  I tipped back my glass of orange juice and chugged it noisily.

  When I was done, I said brightly, “Great juice. You can taste that Florida sunshine.” I set the glass down on the chic polished-concrete countertop and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “So, what's on the agenda for today? I've got some time on my hands. I want to help with your investigation.”

  His upper lip was still deciding whether to go full-snarl. “How can you help? Has the spirit been giving you new information?”

  “Yes!” I held my finger in the air triumphantly. “Winona Vander Zalm wants me to make sure the money from the sale of the house got to her heirs without any complications. Her heirs, who happen to be…” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples with two fingers. “The Moo Family? Winona, do you mean cows? For someone who was an animal-rights activist, you sure know a lot of recipes for veal.”